Investigators say it is too early to speak about abducted lawmaker’s murder

Earlier on Sunday, the police said that Pakhomov was murdred

Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, February 17 (Itar-Tass) – Investigators say it is too early to speak about the murder of the abducted lawmaker from the Lipetsk City Council, Mikhail Pakhomov.

“The police statement that Pakhomov was killed is premature, since his body has not yet been found. Investigators will take a complex of measures to find his whereabouts and to either confirm or refute reports about his murder,” a spokesman for the Russian Investigations Committee said on Sunday.

The spokesman stressed that first-hand information about the probe comes only from the investigators.

Earlier on Sunday, the police said that Pakhomov was murdred.

“By now, officers from the ministry’s criminal investigation department and from local police have established that lawmaker Pakhomov was killed. His body is presumably kept in the settlement of Vorovskogo in the Moscow region,” a Russian interior ministry spokesman said.

According to available reports, after Pakhomov’s abduction on February 12 on the highway Don in the Moscow region, the traffic police stopped a suspicious car. The check of the car revealed a case was with the lawmaker’s passport, a mobile phone and an iPad.

Meanwhile, the accusations were brought in the Lipetsk Region against a contractor and perpetrator of the abduction of deputy of the Lipetsk city council Mikhail Pakhomov. “The detectives found that the deputy was abducted on the contract from a resident of the Moscow region that occupied earlier the post of the deputy minister for the housing and public utility sector of the Moscow regional government Yevgeny Kharitonov,” senior aide to the head of the regional department of the Russian Investigations Committee Galina Karlina told Itar-Tass earlier on Sunday. Kharitonov was detained. Moreover, “four perpetrators of this crime were detained and arrested as well,” Karlina noted. All of them were charged with abduction.

The investigation is in progress in all the details of the crimes. The investigation in the criminal case is under special control of the investigation department.

The City Council turned in the police to help search for chairman of the regional office of Opora Rossii Mikhail Pakhomov, 37, on February 12. Similar request came in the police from the mother of the deputy, who stated that the whereabouts of her son are unclear for her. On the next day, a criminal case was opened on murder charges (part 1, article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code).